


Square Peg, Round Hole

by hopelessoptimist



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelessoptimist/pseuds/hopelessoptimist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his wife walks out on him, Derek is heartbroken. Stiles wants to fix him, even if it breaks him in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square Peg, Round Hole

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing fic for this fandom! It's actually more like a preview for a full length multi-chapter which I have plotted out and may of may not get around to actually writing, but this wouldn't fit the writing style I have planned for that so I decided to post it as a standalone. Enjoy :D

The thing was, he had a very clear idea of what their relationship was.

 

Because it was only six months ago (even though it felt like a lifetime) that he’d seen Mr and Mrs Hale walking down the street with a shiny new pale pink pram. Mrs Hale had been the one pushing it, laughing as Mr Hale pressed a kiss to the mole beneath her eye and smiled into her hair with an arm around her waist. It had been a bright and sunny day, but they seemed to glow brighter, the very picture of a perfect young couple in love.

 

Six months ago, the old ladies sitting outside the cafes would point them out, smiling into theirs coffees talking about “Derek and Paige Hale” the “beautiful couple” who “married young”, the “High School sweethearts” and “their wonderful little girl”.

 

Three months ago, when Paige Hale went to New York, she didn’t take her new family with her.

 

Now the same old ladies were talking about “ _Poor_ Derek Hale, the _single_ father” who “married _too_ young”, raising “ _his_ little girl _all alone_ ”, and shaking their heads with pity in their voices.

 

They probably wouldn’t be so pitying if they knew that barely a month after his wife had walked out on him, Derek Hale (25, History teacher at BHHS, eldest son of the locally influential and obscenely wealthy Hale family) had started screwing one of his underage male students.

 

Though putting it like that made it sound like Derek had somehow taken advantage of him. It would probably be more accurate to say that, since Stiles Stilinski (17, student at BHHS and part time babysitter, only son of Sherriff Stilinski) had made a move on his long term badly repressed crush when he was particularly emotionally vulnerable, he was the one taking advantage of Derek.

 

But what actually happened was, one night only a couple of weeks after Paige’s departure, Stiles had walked into the Hales’ house for regularly scheduled babysitting to find Derek holding his sleeping baby girl and crying. Stiles maintained that anyone with a pulse would have walked over there and held them both in their arms, respectable student-teacher employer-employee boundaries be damned. If it all went downhill from there, well, they were probably taking advantage of each other.

 

Stiles didn’t need to see Derek’s sad smile when he rocked baby Laura to sleep, or feel Derek kiss the parts his cheek which he knew were decorated with moles to know where he stood. Because it wasn’t him Derek needed. It was the wife that had walked out and left him alone with a four month old, and Stiles was stupidly willing to contort himself into the hole Paige had left in Derek’s life even if he wasn’t dumb enough to think it would end well.

 

So yeah, Stiles knew that he was only a replacement for Mrs Hale. But if being a replacement was what it took to have Derek, then Stiles would fight for that chance and cling to it for as long as Derek allowed. Because that was the painful truth, Derek wasn’t meant to be with Stiles, would never have been if losing his wife hadn’t left him broken and desperate.

 

That first night, after he’d hugged Derek, the two of them had put Laura in her crib and gone to Derek’s room. They didn’t have sex that night, but Stiles had held Derek in his arms, kissing his forehead and cheeks and the damp corners of his eyes and when he eventually found his way to Derek’s lips Derek was kissing back. He’d kissed Derek to sleep, and even when he drifted off there were still tears glistening on his face in the half light.

 

The next day at school, Stile was almost vibrating out of his seat with anxious tension despite the lack of sleep he’d had. Derek on the other hand looked exactly like the Mr Hale from before. It was a subtle difference, head more upright, eyes brighter, shoulders more relaxed, only noticeable to Stiles due to months of the kind of borderline obsessive observation borne of a hopeless teenage crush.

 

That’s when Stiles decided to keep this thing they had between them going, whatever it was; it was slowly helping to put Derek back together piece by piece. Every time they were together, Stiles could see a little less sadness and a little more life in Derek’s eyes. But every broken piece back in place was one step taken away from Stiles.

 

Even if it was only until Derek inevitably regained his senses and ended the whole thing, leaving Stiles’ heart broken and freely bleeding in the dust.

 

Derek was worth that much and more.


End file.
